Computer Supported Coorporative Work (CSCW) addresses “how collaborative activities and their coordination can be supported by means of computer systems.” On the one hand, many authors consider that CSCW and groupware are synonyms. CSCW is a generic term, which combines the understanding of the way people work in groups with the enabling technologies of computer networking, and associated hardware, software, services and techniques. Groupware can be divided into three categories depending on the level of collaboration—communication tools, conferencing tools and collaborative management (Co-ordination) tools. Electronic communication tools send messages, files, data, or documents between people and hence facilitate the sharing of information. Examples include: email, instant messaging, faxing, voice mail and web publishing. Electronic conferencing tools facilitate the sharing of information, but in a more interactive way. Examples include: Internet forums (also known as message boards or discussion boards)—a virtual discussion platform to facilitate and manage online text messages;
Chatting—a virtual discussion platform to facilitate and manage real-time text messages;
Telephony—telephones allow users to interact;
Video conferencing—networked PCs share video and audio signals;
Data conferencing—networked PCs share a common whiteboard that each user can modify;
Application sharing—users can access a shared document or application from their respective computers simultaneously in real time; Electronic meeting systems (EMS)—a conferencing system built into a room. The special purpose room will usually contain a large video projector interlinked with numerous PCs.
Collaborative management tools facilitate and manage group activities. Examples include: electronic calendars (also called time management software)—schedule events and automatically notify and remind group members; project management systems—schedule, track, and chart the steps in a project as it is being completed; workflow systems—collaborative management of tasks and documents within a knowledge-based business process; knowledge management systems—collect, organize, manage, and share various forms of information; extranet systems (sometimes also known as ‘project extranets’)—collect, organize, manage and share information associated with the delivery of a project (eg: the construction of a building); social software systems—organize social relations of groups; online spreadsheets—collaborate and share structured data and information. Collaborative software can be either web based (such as UseModWiki or Scoop), or desktop systems (such as CVS or RCS).
A conference call is a telephone call where the calling party wants to have more than one called party listen in to the audio portion of the call. The conference call may be designed to allow the called party to also talk during the call, or the call may be set up so that the called party merely listens into the call but cannot speak. It is often referred to as an ATC (Audio Tele-Conference). These conference calls are a convenient way for many people to conduct business affairs while being in different physical locations. Even the technology for conference calls has progressed to the point that many users have systems that remind them of scheduled calls and prompt them immediately before a scheduled telephone conference is to occur. Some of these conference notification systems automatically remind the user of a scheduled teleconference.
At certain times, the currently available reminder capability for conference calls or other meetings in collaboration tools (such as Lotus Notes) are insufficient. The basic problem is that they require the user to be using the computer or be near it, in order to be alerted about an upcoming meeting. Consider the following cases where that requirement is problematic for obtaining the alert:    The user has left his/her laptop locked in an office and is collaborating with fellow coworkers on the design of some new architecture in a conference room. Or, as another example, the user is attending a department celebration such as a major project delivery or a coworker retirement, etc. in a conference room and has left his/her laptop in an office.    The user may have been stopped in the hallway and asked about a solution to some problem, and as a result of the ensuing discussion, may have forgotten about an upcoming meeting.    In the user's current time zone, the meeting is scheduled for early afternoon, but because the user has flown to another location to work on another project, the meeting may occur while the user is out at lunch in the new time zone, or early in the morning while the user is still getting dressed for work, for example.    The user may be in a taxi on the way to/from an airport or may be in some other capacity where he/she is not likely to have a laptop open. While the user may not want to take a confidential call in these instances, there are non-confidential calls and non-participatory calls that the user might want to take in these instances, such as an overview of the new features and advantages of a recently released software product from IBM, for example.
These scenarios highlight the problems associated with notifying a user of a conference call when that user is away from his/her computer. There remains a need for a means to connect to or be reminded of a conference call or meeting while the user is away from his/her computer.